Welcome

WELCOMEInteractions

Authors:
Richard Anderson, Jon Kolko

Richard and I took over the editorship of interactions
magazine three years ago. In that short time, we’ve published 18
issues of content with the intent of satisfying both explicit and
implicit goals, which were described in our first issue:

To increase the relevance of this magazine to practitioners
engaged in interaction practice

To ensure that the content of the magazine is deep, diverse,
and has a global relevance

To place an emphasis on the people, technology, and
experiences that merge in contemporary culture to create
meaningful and positive interactions

We set out to bring intellectual and thoughtprovoking content
to practitioners in order to minimize the gap between visionary
research and pragmatic design work. Too often, “practitioner
focused” articles are reduced to bulleted top-10 lists.
Practitioners can beand should bereflective, and
actionable content need not be pedantic. The work we have
published has highlighted both method and theory and attempted to
intertwine the two into actionable, and intellectual,
articles.

We intended to force a discussion of interaction design at a
level that transcends any particular interface or medium. Our
work is not, fundamentally, about moving pixels on a screen, and
the editorial decisions we made reflected a need to elevate the
discussion to one of behavior, influence, emotion, and
policy.

Finally, our hope was to bring the magazine, and the
community, closer to the vision of founding co-editor John
Rheinfrank. The late Rheinfrank was responsible for, among other
things, the notion of design languages and design probes, and was
skilled at speaking intellectuallyand in great
depthto the issues of design while remaining firmly
embedded in the world of practice. He exemplified a reflective,
transdisciplinary practitioner: One who could both make and
think, and one who dedicated nearly his entire professional life
to helping connect action with insight in a diversity of
mediums.

In this issue, you’ll find articles characteristic of all of
these goals.

Dennis Schleicher, Peter Jones, and Oksana Kachur describe
bodystorminga method beginning to creep out of the academy
and into practice. José A. Martínez
Salmerón, a practicing visual designer, discusses
aestheticstouching on beauty, truth, and greatness. And
Adaptive Path’s Ben Fullerton discusses how, why, and when to
design for solitude.

You’ll also find an emotional retrospective section, including
thoughts from Gary Marsden on his work in developing countries
and from Steve Portigal on his work in designing for and with
rich American culture. Don Norman, who has been with
interactions magazine for the past five years, pens his
last piece as a regular columnist. And Jon Freach, Shelley
Evenson, and Hugh Dubberly all reflect on working with the
aforementioned John Rheinfrank, describing both his kindness and
his dedication in furthering the profession of interaction
design.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with such a dedicated
group of contributors, and I thank all of the volunteers on the
interactions team who have offered their time, hearts,
andmost importanttheir intellect in building this
magazine. I’m proud to thank both the ACM and SIGCHI for
continuing to fund, support, and manage such a critical
publication as interactions.

Thank you for giving me the chance to contribute to this
magazine as editor in chief. I’m honored to have had the
opportunity, and I trust it’s served the community well.

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